NCAA Football 07 Walkthrough & Strategy Guide

Published: Jan 1, 2006

Dynasty

In Dyansty mode, you can take complete control over your favorite college football team. Everything from recruiting to playcalling becomes your responsibility. Of course, the school isn't going to let you do just anything you want. If you
don't meet their goals for the team, they'll look for a new coach. This section is designed to help you make it through the difficult decisions you'll be faced with while running a college team.

Scheduling

As the coach, it is your job to decide which teams you face during the regular season. If you're looking for an undefeated season, try loading up the schedule with a
bunch of pushovers. But remember, your strength of schedule helps to determine your ranking and bowl game bids. If you play nothing but cupcake teams, you'll
drop out of the rankings and end up with an early end to your season.

There is a general rule of thumb to follow. The better your team is, the tougher your schedule should be. If you're trying to take a terrible team up to the top, start by giving them a schedule that they can win. This will enable you
to get more prospects interested in your team -- nobody likes a team that hasn't won any games. If your team is already good, big wins against similarly ranked teams will help improve the way you look in the eyes of recruits and will get you
a shot at the national championship.

Redshirt Players

Sometimes you'll end up getting a 5 star quarterback commiting to your team before your senior star goes on to the pros. Don't worry. You can redshirt the incoming freshman. This will allow him to improve through
a year of practice and still be a freshman the next year. That means you'll get an extra year of development into a player without losing his eligibility to play in college.

It's more likely that you'll redshirt a player at a
position where you have a lot of depth. If you have a junior and a senior QB who
are both awesome players and you just recruited another freshman stud, there's
no sense in keeping the freshman on the bench. He's probably not going to play
because of the guys ahead of him, so why waste a year of his eligibility?
Redshirt him for a year, and next season he can be the backup QB as a redshirt
freshman. This way he still has all four years of eligibility remaining. Now if
disaster befalls your first two QBs you can pull the frosh off the redshirt list
and put him on your active roster, which forfeits that redshirt year for him.
He's got to play out all four consecutive years now.

Also, you can redshirt a player in any year. If you like
the way your junior linebacker has developed and you know you've got a sophomore
linebacker who's going to be a gamer as well, you can make sure they play their
last two seasons side by side by redshirting the junior. You take the lump this
season by holding back a talented player, but you'll have two awesome guys going
for you the next season and the season after that.

You can only redshirt a player during the offseason, but
you can bring a guy off the redshirt list during the season. It's better to put
a guy on there knowing you can take him off later than to miss the opportunity
to sit a player when you had the chance. Also, players will develop and improve
their skills during their redshirt year, so it's almost like you're getting an
extra year of ratings boost by redshirting a player at some point during his
college career.

In-Season Recruiting

The recruiting process begins briefly during the Preseason. Here, you can recruit
players during the season and, if you're successful, they will commit to your team before the off-season even
begins. Start in the Pre-Season by targeting players that will fill the holes that your graduating seniors will make at the end
of the season. Keep in mind how many scholarships you have available and where you'll need players. It's a good idea to recruit the best players out of your pipeline states, as they are more likely
to come to your school. In the 360 version of NCAA Football 07, you can even check their interest. Don't try to recruit anybody that isn't interested in your school.

As the season progresses, the list of schools the players are interested in will be cut, so don't bother to focus your time and energies recruiting a player
who is only mildly interested in your team. If a player cuts your team from his interest list, reallocate his recruitment points to players who are more interested in your team. Towards the end of the season, be sure to extend an offer to visit the school, especially during the week of a big game, so that the recruit
can see why your team is the best. Before one player visits, look at his Pitch Feedback and find out why the player is interested in your school. This will help you adjust what pitch you
give during the campus visit and allow you to maximize your chances of landing a big recruit.

Early Off-Season

After the regular season and before the bowls,
conference championship trophies will be presented. After the Heisman has been
presented, you will learn whether or not you've received a bid to play in a Bowl
game. If so, you'll have one more game to play. If not, get gear up for the
recruiting process a little earlier. You'll also learn the results of your In-Season Recruiting. If you
managed to convince them, players will begin committing to your school as the season ends.

If you did exceptionally well, and surpassed expected
goals, the university may offer you (as Coach) an extension. You can choose to
accept or decline. If you're planning to build your squad into an unbeatable
Dynasty, better sign. If you performed under expectations, they may show you the
door. All of this will happen before you ever get to the postseason menu.

Off-Season

Note: Not all of these features exist in the stripped down Dynasty mode on the Xbox 360 version of NCAA Football 07.

There is one last thing to do in the offseason, and it's both the most
important and the most time-consuming. It's also at the top of the Dynasty list.
It's the Offseason Schedule, and it will walk you through the recruiting
process. Click on it to go to an nine-step menu. At any time, you can skip down
this list and have your assistant coach handle the recruiting duties. But what
fun would that be?

Step 1: School Budgets There are three sliders you can manipulate here in
order to allocate moneys to different portions of your school's budget. You
start with 0 available percentage points, so in order to add points to any area,
you'll have to take them away from another one. Here's how they break down:

Recruiting: Smaller schools might have some difficulty
pulling in talent, and you may want to consider cranking up the Recruiting
budget a bit to help in this effort. You probably still won't be able to pull
in the AAA players, but the quality of interest will generally be better. If
you're a prestigious school, don't get too carried away with this slider.

Training: This
is where you can improve the stats of your existing players and the ones you
recruit. If you are only planning on playing a season or two of Dynasty, go
ahead and crank this slider up. It will help make your existing guys good,
sacrificing the future for some short-term gains.

Discipline: Don't change this slider too much, because
the further it drops down, the harder it will be to keep your players in line
as the year progresses.

Step 2: Players LeavingHere's where you bid your hard-working warriors
adieu. Will they leave and head for greener pastures in the NFL? If they do,
make sure you export your save for use in Madden
2007. There are three ways players can leave. First, they can graduate. This
happens when a player uses up all of his eligibility... err... completes his
studies and receives a degree. When a player has played his senior year, he has
to leave, even if all that's waiting for him is a job as a ditch digger. Second,
he can choose to go to another school, claiming he is not making a difference on
the current team. Some of your better players may also want to depart for
the NFL early. If a player is good and wants to go, there's really nothing you
can do about it.

There is a way to keep guys around if they're headed out
the door, but it involves using some of your recruitment points for Week One.
Our opinion? There aren't too many indispensable
athletes. Unless you have an emotional attachment to a guy, let him leave. After
all, you don't want to have to play like crap just to keep your talented people
around. Let them go... you'll make more. When you're done, you'll have two choices... either
export your draft class or simply continue to recruiting. Exporting your draft
class only need be done if you plan on playing Franchise Mode in Madden 2007
.

Step 3: Recruiting
Recruiting Central displays a
map of the US, and highlights your home state. From this location, you can get
Recruiting Reports or check your squad's Team Overview. On the Recruiting Report, you'll see these options:

State Prospects:

A list of all of the prospects
from the state where your school is located.

Current Targets:

The players to whom you've
offered scholarships. After week one, it will still list them even if they've
committed to other schools.

National Top 100:

A list of the top 100 players
in the nation regardless of position. All of them are blue chip prospects as
designated by the five stars next to their names. Don't even try to land one
of these guys unless your team has at least four stars of prestige.

All Prospects:

Just like it says, this is the
massive list of every school kid and junior college player that wants a
scholarship to play ball.

Interested Prospects:

The most helpful list. It
includes all of the players, both good and bad, who want to come to your
school.

Returning Players:

Also very helpful. See exactly
where your strengths are at a micro level, and look at individual stats. For
instance, if you know you have one slow receiver, you may want to look
slightly beyond rating when recruiting and pick up a faster WR.

On the Team Overview screen, you'll see a global view of
how your team is composed, and ratings of each and every position. Obviously,
you want to attack the lowest rated areas first and make sure those are hammered
down before working on improving some of the other areas.

Other things to note here include number of scholarships
you have left (this is the total number of players you'll be able to recruit).
You'll also want to take a look at any orange categories. This means that you're
light on players at that position, and you'll need to fill them up. If a line is
orange, look over to the far right where it says "Needs" to see how many to
recruit.

You'll have five total weeks to recruit players, and you
should keep an eye on your Team Overview after every move you make. After all,
you want to have the fullest, best squad possible at the end of the recruiting
period, or you could lose ground in your conference.

Start with Interested Prospects. If there are five star
athletes looking at your school, lucky you. Throw some resources at them to move
yourself up in their estimation. Especially go after highly-rated players who
have you listed as the first school in their Top 3.

If you're interested in getting a guy, you can do two
things with the Prospect: Scout or Recruit. Scouting will give you a quick idea of the player's
strengths and weaknesses, and how he measures up in areas of strength and speed, based on 40 speed
and bench press, etc. Scouting guys costs recruiting points, so don't scout every last person
you're interested in. If a guy has a high star rating, consider that he
will probably be a quality player even if he's not exactly what you
thought he'd be. Save your recruiting points for the Recruiting process, and to
scout players who are really questionable. However, if you really want to land a guy,
don't be bashful about throwing some heavy artillery his way.

Now it's time to Recruit! When talking to players, you can stress different things. Scroll
back and forth where it says "Pitch" in order to talk up Coach Prestige, Program
Prestige, Location, Playing Time, or Coaching Style. If it's a local boy, you
can talk about location. QBs might dig the Coaching Style angle. If your school
is extremely respected, pitch the Prestige angle, but only if you have the stars
to back it up.

With highly-rated players who are also interested in
you, make sure you give them at least a visit from your head coach. Even if the
interest level is high, you want to keep it up there. If interest is flagging a
bit, and you can spare some points, go ahead and double-team a guy with coach
and assistant coach visits. It may pay huge dividends.

When you are done with Interested Prospects, head to your
State Prospects. Use the Location angle on these guys, and visit the
highly-rated ones with at least one coach to bring up their interest level. Even
if a player does not currently have an interest in you, you may want to try the
Location thing and throw some points at him to see if you can get him
interested. Remember, it's a five-week process and you don't need to do it all
the first week... but you do have to plant the seeds.

If you still have a lot of points remaining after
pursuing Interested and State prospects, take a quick gander at the National Top
100. If there is anyone on this list interested in you, make sure to throw the
full load of points at you. If he is a player at a skill position, preach
Playing Time. Otherwise, preach Coaching Style or Location (if nearby). Don't
waste points on someone whose interest level is less than half, though. They'll
probably go elsewhere.

Once you have done all you can, go back to the main map
and press Start. Advance to the next week if you want to keep recruiting, or
Simulate All Weeks if you don't care. If you choose to do the next week, set
things in motion, and you'll begin to see prospects committing to your
university. If you didn't land many recruits the first week, lower your sights a
little. Focus on the players who are interested in you in the next rounds, and
throw a lot of points at the guys you really want. Remember, you are competing
against more than a hundred other schools. Sweeten the deal in the second round
and bring those recruits home!

Also, be mindful of the fact that you have a finite
number of scholarships. You really must focus on the things you need on the Team
Overview screen. You'll also want to bring up your lowest rankings by
aggressively pursuing good athletes in those categories. Anything at C- level or
below should be considered an immediate priority.

In the rounds after one, keep working on Prospects that
you have already wooed but who haven't signed. You'll note that a lot of their
Interest Levels will have risen if you've paid close attention to them. Make
sure you keep the pressure on if you want them to sign. If a player's Interest
remains flat, try a different approach during the Pitch. If Location doesn't
work, use Playing Time or Coaching Style. Mix it up and see what happens.

If you ever run out
of scholarships, that's when you should head back to the map and go to the next week.
You can only offer the number of scholarships that are left after each week,
so if you recruit a player, that scholarship will be gone. As you move
along, the weeks will go faster and faster. After the final week, it's on to
the next bit of business. Once you finalize the recruits, the CPU will add
walk-ons for every team.

Step 4: Position
Changes
It happens a lot in college football, where corners
may become receivers, and tight ends might be better served as linebackers. Why would
you switch a player? Usually because you're already loaded up in one position and lacking
in another. By moving players around, you don't have to re-recruit for positions you
may be lacking in.

Select a player, and a pop-up window will appear showing current position and the
new position. Scan through the new positions and check out the Ovr rating that appears.
You'll want it to be about the same (or better, which is rare) than
the player's original position.

Step 5: Spring Game The Spring Game exists for you to scrimmage your players and see how they perform on the field. This is a new feature for this year
but it isn't the most necessary. It does effect the way the next step comes out, so it may be worth it to start and play
as those students you need the most improvement from.

Step 6: Training ResultsAll that Training does is show how your players'
attributes changed. A player might have a Breakthrough year and improve a lot,
or show Minimal gain. This section is basically designed to show you
who your future stars may be.

At the end, you'll be allowed to pick your offensive and defensive MVPs for the spring. This allows you to pick two of your
Impact Players for the coming season. It is wise to pick an Impact Player at a position that you feel comfortable using on most downs. Don't bother putting your kicker as
an Impact Player - they get minimal time on the field. In general, having a HB or QB as your offensive MVP is the best decision. On the defense, you'll
want a linebacker or defensive end. These are the players that will be critical on every down, so you'll want the added bonus of having them in the zone occasionally.

Step 7: Cut PlayersTime
to get rid of some dead weight. Or not. If you don't want you, you don't really
need to cut anybody. You can just let the CPU do it. But if you have a ton of
players
at one position, you may want to set some guys free. The roster
needs to be at 55 or less, so if you want to manage the
cuts, go for it. Otherwise, the computer will simply cut all the lowest rated players
at the most full positions.

Remember when cutting that you can redshirt guys before
the season begins. So if you think a guy near the bottom is going to blossom
down the road, slap a redshirt on him and see if you're right.

Step 8: Set Depth Chart
The CPU will automatically put the top-rated player in the first place
of each position. However, if you value speed over rating (for instance at the HB position),
you'll want to take matters into your own hands. It's not imperative that you do any reordering here,
though, as setting the depth chart is available from your Season menu as
well.